I have this concern: which software do I use for drawing phrase structure trees in Moodle, if I am responding to an assignment using the online text box.
Hi Makhosazana,
I'm assuming you mean Chomskian syntax structure trees. Is that correct?
As far as I know, there aren't any plugins or even Javascript libraries for drawing these (unlike MathJax for Math notation or abcjs for music notation, for example).
The best I can suggest is to provide templates as SVG files that students can edit and submit to Moodle with the Assignment module.
A good free and open source SVG editor is https://inkscape.org/
Alternatively, perhaps one of the mind/concept map plugins for Moodle would be suitable? Concept/mind maps are somewhat similar in that they render hierarchical branching structures: https://moodle.org/plugins/?q=concept%20map
I hope this helps,
Matt
Just as Matt pointed out, you and your students might use an online tool to generate your syntactic trees. You would then save and post the generated images into the moodle editor. Here's an easy to use online syntactic image generator: http://mshang.ca/syntree/